A Rough Patch

People say all kinds of things on the subject of marriage. Many comments and tidbits of advice are ridiculous, some are illogical and unlivable, but most are simply trite.

This coming August, we will have been married for six years. Six years! We are now closer to a decade of marriage than to our wedding day. There is no turning back now. After all that time, I’m beginning to realize that all my collected knowledge on marriage amounts to a hill of beans. I realize more and more that marriage is an enigma and to attempt to understand or simplify the institution into small chewable amounts of information is ludicrous.

A lot of married couples find it hard to admit when there are difficult times. I am generally one of those people myself, but lately I’ve found there is much more to be learned by sharing the difficult truths than by glossing over your everyday life and all the complex ingredients of which it consists. We aren’t a perfect couple and we aren’t guaranteed to make it to that invisible, unspoken finish line for which a marriage is meant to strive. The point is that there is no finish line—there is no goal as such. That’s what makes the decision to marry such an intimidating one. Nothing compares to the nebulous expectations and lifespan of a marriage. Even when you become a parent, there are little accomplishments along the way that you can expect. You can even conceivably expect to “finish” your job as a parent to some extent at the end of about 18 to 21 years (although most parents would argue that point). Marriage isn’t a task—It’s a lifestyle choice and from “I do’s” to “death you do part” is at once a tricky, unappreciated, ordinary, comforting and passionate journey.

I have always felt that my partner and I had very little in common in terms of our tastes, but even that begins to change as the years pass by. You begin to morph into each other a bit. He has begun to dress more the way I would dress a man (you’ll notice I said “more” and not completely). I have begun to embrace the silly and childlike in this world opting away from my more contemplative and sullen pursuits. We change and hopefully improve each other. Perhaps we are even refined by the process of building and repairing our relationship.

Lately, we have struggled with new issues that have arisen and have silently threatened our otherwise even-tempered home. To be sure, being a full-time employee, student and father is no easy task, but somehow a wife can still develop resentment after appearing to fall lower and lower on her husband’s priority list. In turn, a husband can get confused and frustrated by a wife’s change in attitude and sentiment and wish he could spend less time sorting things out and more time making love or simply getting on with life. Wow. We are strange and dissimilar creatures. No matter how similar you are in the beginning, your differences as men and women will catch up to you at some point and I have to believe that that’s okay.

How do the willing participants of a marriage address the pea underneath all those mattresses while still suffering from its ill effects? There seem to be more and more options available to a couple facing any number of issues. Most often we try letting the issue work itself out, after all, most issues are temporary and calm will be theoretically restored when the storm is over. If that doesn’t work, or in our case, that solution won’t come quickly enough, what is next? You can torture each other with hour long talks about the issue and resolve to attempt any number of complex methods that are forgotten as soon as the baby goes to bed and the T.V. is switched on. Repeat this step as many times as necessary before threatening each other with counseling. Counseling seems like this terrifying, last ditch effort to a lot of married couples. Not so. Third party perspective is often exactly the thing to turn the tables on a seemingly hopeless situation. Strangely enough, praying in each others presence also has the effect of speaking to a third party, when sincere. Often, it softens the listener enough to actually do the most dreaded of relational duties… accept responsibility! Then if things are going to work, we decide on the sacrifices that will be made for the sake of the union. Sticking to those sacrificial choices is the toughest part.

Why do all this?! Isn’t it easier to promise “to be together as long as we love?” Those are popular vows for a reason—it is easier. No honest married couple will deny that one or both partners have thought the dreaded “D” word at one time or another. We all know couples who chose this route with good and bad results. There is no doubt that in some situations it is the only option, but for most of us, it just isn’t. Obviously there have to be rewards to doing the hard work and getting through the rough patches. No matter what my emotions do, I really only love one man and getting over him would ruin me in a lot of ways. He is not just my partner, but my best friend and the father of my son—I could never loose all of those things without going completely numb. It’s not just the threat of loosing that keeps us doing the work—it’s the all too soon forgotten rewards of an awesome marriage that keeps us hooked on each other. I believe that the decision to marry someone is the bond itself—that you can never fully extract them from your soul.

While we have not had to deal with marriage crippling issues, we have our own set of difficulties that make us wonder and drift. We aren’t perfect, but in the end, we really care about each other more than ourselves and that is what real love is. Love is the ultimate motivator.

Accepting responsibility and making choices for the good of each other has made us closer than ever. I have to let go of my hang-ups for his sake and do those things that he needs from me. He communicates more and more and even sacrifices some of his own time to simply be with me or help me. It may seem excessive but our growing humility and concern for our relationship makes us want to do more—to get through a rough patch and find our way back to the bliss of our wedding day when we promised to love each other until death parted us.